Bengaluru’s civic authority, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has been the victim of a 400 crore scam. The BBMP has handed over the investigation of the garbage-disposal scam to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). It is a curious case of missing compactors and auto tippers from the BBMP. According to multiple reports, the BBMP

Bengaluru’s civic authority, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has been the victim of a 400 crore scam. The BBMP has handed over the investigation of the garbage-disposal scam to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). It is a curious case of missing compactors and auto tippers from the BBMP.

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According to multiple reports, the BBMP planned to install GPS trackers in all their vehicles that dispose off garbage. There are two types of vehicles- auto-tippers and compactors – for collecting segregated waste in the municipal area spread over 700 square kilometres, divided into 198 wards that generate approximately 3800 tonnes of garbage per day. However, the contractors were reluctant at first to install the GPS tracking system.This is where the scam started to unfold. The process revealed that contractors had given an inflated number of vehicles.

That means over a thousand vehicles only existed on paper. The BBMP pays Rs. 60,000 for each auto-tipper and Rs. 1.5 lakh per compactor depending on their capacity per month. However, out of the 3,600 vehicles they were paying for, only 2,600 actually existed. BBMP Commissioner Manjunath Prasad said, “I have discussed matters related to the scam with Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara, who has agreed to hand over the investigation to the CID.”

The BBMP has now claimed that about 139 compactors were not in service and 1,047 auto tippers didn’t collect garbage. Moreover, fitness certificate of 25 to 30 percent of such auto tippers had expired 5 years back. The worst part is that all of these vehicles were approved and cleared by the ward level engineers. Many of these vehicles were even registered two-wheelers and ambassador cars.

This whole scam resulted in a 400 crore loss for the BBMP over a period of 4 years. Contractors were earning lakhs of money every month by doing nothing and just registering the same vehicles multiple number of times. Though the scam has been uncovered, a garbage clean-up is required.